The same was true of Mablen Jones, a bundle of enthusiasm that autumn afternoon. Both women recently “graduated” from Muskegon County’s mental health court.

The court is a collaboration of 60th District Court, Community Mental Health Services of Muskegon County and the court’s probation office, with cooperation from defense and prosecuting attorneys.

The goal is to protect the public by reducing repeat crimes by mentally ill criminal defendants, at the same time improving the participants' lives.

MLive.com

Defendants plead guilty or no contest to their charges – mostly misdemeanors like shoplifting, domestic assault, petty larceny – and are given a suspended jail sentence and supervised probation as well as the usual fines and costs.

The probation conditions include mandatory mental-health treatment and in-court reviews once a month with a courtroom full of fellow participants, usually about 25 strong.

The incentive is a successful discharge from probation, sometimes early, hopefully with some life skills learned and needed treatment begun. The hammer is jail time for those who violate their terms of probation.

“I recall you coming on your first arraignment,” the judge told VerHage, who had served less than eight months of a nine-month probation sentence for two cases of retail fraud, second-degree and third-degree. “I was concerned about you, just seeing you in the back row, even before I knew anything about you.

“You are completely different from what you were on that day,” Ladas Hoopes told the smiling, alert woman. “I’ll miss seeing you.”

VerHage returned the compliment. “You’ve been an encourager,” she said to the judge.

Jones, the other graduate that day, was surprised to be called forward. “I really didn’t know!” she said.

“You have been a model, you really have,” the judge told Jones, who had served 8 ½ months of a nine-month probation for second-degree retail fraud.

“I know it’s been a struggle,” Ladas Hoopes said. “There were times you came in, and I know you were happy to be alive. And there were times when I knew it was a struggle.”

Ladas Hoopes noted that Jones had shared her experiences with her church and on a local cable TV program. “Congratulations. You are officially discharged!”

Tearfully, Jones thanked the judge.

Outside court, both women shared a little of their stories and of how, they believed, mental health court had helped them.

“I’ve been in and out of trouble since I was 12 years old,” Jones said, serving terms in jail and prison and repeated rounds of probation and parole. “I don’t want to see this place again.

“I didn’t understand the good side of life until now,” she said. “I’m just proud of myself. ... It’s just time for me to move on in my life.”

Jones said her diagnosis was bipolar disorder, sometimes called manic depression.

“I appreciate him so much,” she said of her Community Mental Health counselor. “He’s been helping me a whole lot. My plan is to commit to make it.

“I want to help others, help others stay out of jail or prison, show them that that isn’t the way to go.”

An early-December check of court records, about two months after her graduation, showed no new criminal charges against the 47-year-old Jones since the Sept. 30, 2012, shoplifting in Muskegon that landed her in mental health court. She’s enrolled in a payment program for the balance of her fines and costs, with all other probation conditions completed.

Unlike Jones, VerHage had no criminal record until recent years, when, court records show, a spate of shoplifting arrests began in 2009 when she was 59, continuing with the two 2012 cases that landed her in mental health court.

“I had a complete nervous breakdown,” VerHage said. “I was not thinking straight.” In March and again in September 2012, she shoplifted from a Fruitport Township store, according to court records.

After she was arrested and charged with both offenses in the fall of 2012, she entered Forest View Psychiatric Hospital in Grand Rapids for about 2 ½ weeks. On Feb. 5, 2013, she was sentenced in both cases to nine months probation including mental health court, with the threat of a 365-day suspended jail sentence hanging over her head.

VerHage, now 64, said she’s been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder. She said she was “very manic” at the time of the shoplifting incidents.

After her arrest, “first I thought, gosh, how can I live anymore?” VerHage said.

Now, after months of treatment under the supervision of mental health court, “I’m not ashamed of it,” she said of her mental illness. “It’s something I have no control over” -- except the ability to treat it, which, she believed, she has been doing successfully through medication and counseling.

“I am very grateful,” she said of mental health court and the treatment it had forced her to stick with. “It’s very important. I’ve learned some of my behavior patterns and why.”

As with Jones, a December check of court records showed no new charges against VerHage since the September 2012 shoplifting.

Under Ladas Hoopes’ leadership, 60th District Court set up an informal mental health court in early 2009. The chief goal, she said, was public safety – trying to reduce crime by reducing recidivism among mentally ill offenders.

At first the court was small, with five or six participants at a time. Over the course of 2009, more and more defendants were sentenced to it, until by the end of that year and ever since it’s averaged about 25 at a time.

Muskegon County’s mental health court is informal, without state funding, certification, record-keeping requirements or a staff bureaucracy. So far local officials have kept it that way to preserve their freedom of action, though getting state certification is not out of the question.

Muskegon’s mental health court was one of the earlier ones established in Michigan, established because of a perceived need to help deal with what officials saw as a high volume of mentally ill repeat offenders. It’s still one of only about 15 such courts in Michigan, according to a recent study by the State Court Administrative Office.

According to Chief Probation Agent Rich Chambers, who works with mental health court defendants, Muskegon’s court had “graduated” 112 participants in its first 4 ½ years, from March 2009 through August 2013. Of those, he said, roughly 25 percent had reoffended as of September 2013.

The State Court Administrative Office’s more rigorous three-year evaluation of 10 mental health courts, not including Muskegon’s, showed a recidivism rate of about 19 percent one year after graduation. That was less than half the rate of 43 percent for a comparison group of similar offenders not in mental health court, the state said.

“We’ve been seeing very comparable results in our court, particularly with regard to individuals who have the requisite diagnoses, which is a serious mental illness, to get into the court,” Ladas Hoopes said.

That’s especially true for those who don’t also have what mental-health professionals call “co-occuring” disorders like alcoholism or drug addiction, she said. “While we’re seeing good recidivism rates for those individuals as well, we’ve seen excellent results for those who truly just have the serious mental illness,” Ladas Hoopes said.

The judge chooses participants based chiefly on recommendations by CMH. She assigns them to mental health court, if they agree to participate, at the time of sentencing.

She said many participants, especially women, tend in “mid-life” to have two, three or four criminal charges in a short period of time after having no convictions before that – Diane VerHage being one example of that.

“They’re diagnosed with a serious mental illness such as schizophrenia or severe depression, and they will literally transform physically within a couple of months after getting them on course with their mental health treatments,” Ladas Hoopes said.

“That’s really the goal, to try to get them to accept that this is their life, for the rest of their life,” Ladas Hoopes said. “The goal is to try to get them on a regimen that encompasses their treatment for long enough to establish a routine.

“And it’s probably going to be a very good life, if they stay on,” she said. “Those are the ones who realize that they’re going to be OK once we’ve made them come to terms with it.”

The terms of probation vary from six months to two years, which is the maximum possible for district court. As in Jones’ and VerHage’s cases, if participants remain compliant and show good recovery, their terms of probation can be ended early.

Ladas Hoopes and defense attorney James Marek, who represents most of the defendants who go through the court, stress the importance of the collaboration with the probation department and community mental health.

“Without the support of mental health court – CMH workers combined with the probation department as well as the court, the defense side as well as the judge – these people are just set up to fail,” Marek said.

“The brain isn’t wired the same as someone who’s not (mentally ill),” Marek said. “So that wiring requires some additional assistance and some additional handling, if you will ... which then keeps them out of the court system and keeps them stable.”

On the other side of the table, “I certainly support mental health court,” Muskegon County Prosecutor D.J. Hilson said. “(The goal is) not to make people products of the (criminal justice) system but ultimately to get them to focus in on their needs and ultimately keep them out of the system.”

Heather Wiegand, a CMH official who works with mental health court clients, calls the work “incredibly” rewarding.

“I see it as a community collaboration, integrated both with the community and with the clientele it serves,” Wiegand said. “That’s been an honor. It’s very rewarding to watch.”

“I like to see somebody progress in the time they’re on probation,” said Dan Scanlan, a CMH staffer who also works with mental health court. “You see them become more responsible. They’re held to a little bit of a higher standard. You can see them get better almost on a monthly basis.”

John
S. Hausman covers courts, prisons, the environment and local government for
MLive/Muskegon Chronicle. Email him at jhausman@mlive.com and follow
him on Twitter.